Is The Dreamcast A Viable Platform Today?

A visitor to this sight recently asked me about the situation with Sega. He wanted to know if the Dreamcast is yet just another failure from the ranks of Sega, following the disasters such as the Sega CD, 32X (I added that one) CDX and Saturn. This question was prompted by a statement found in another rant on this page about Sega Dreamcast developers ditching it for the PlayStation 2... here is my reply...

I believe that Sega will have an outstanding year in 2000. Keeping that momentum going in 2001 will be a very important factor. It is my opinion that the Sega CD failed primarily because it was an add-on and that the game support was really lacking. Many of the games were not very good. The CDX arrived too late in the Genesis cycle and was way overpriced at $399. I bought one after Sega dumped them for around $85.

The Sega Saturn arrived before there were enough games for the system. Sega made a really poor business decision by only allocating units to a few store chains. Some stores decided not to carry the unit at all because of this. Another thing that hurt the Saturn in the USA was Sega USA itself. It passed on many great import titles. The biggest thing that hurt the Saturn was its complexity under the hood. According to the developer community, it was extremely hard to code for.

Which brings us to the Dreamcast. Sega learned well from its mistakes. The Dreamcast is much easier to deal with from a technical standpoint. It is Windows CE compatible. It also allows a developer to bypass that layer altogether. The Dreamcast launched in the USA with a full complement of games and they keep on coming. The built-in modem is an added bonus that will be fully realized later this year. I expect to see units literally flying off store shelves when the modem compatible sports games come out this fall. Dreamast will have a great 2000. I believe that 2001 will be a good year as well since they should have a good user base, Sega.Net, etc.. 2002? Well, that's just too far off in the gaming world these days! We'll probably see Sega brand titles on other systems by then.

Now to the PS2... frankly, I've yet to see more than 2 or 3 games that I'm interested in at this time. I've got a DVD player so that feature does not get me overly exited. What worries me about the PS2 is that early reports indicate that the hardware is complex, maybe too complex. This is what hurt the Saturn. It also stymied Atari Jaguar development for the most part. Development cost overruns, delays, etc could become an everyday situation with the PS2. I'm also concerned that Sony is twiddling with the configuration due to the Xbox threat from Microsoft.

Like you, I hang onto my CDX for games like Lunar. Shining Force and Popful Mail also make me want to keep it around. As for the Saturn, I still buy the occasional import. There are some fantastic shooters and fighters available for the system.... sadly, most are imports.

Thanks for the feedback,
Larry

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